


this is the road to ruin and we started at the end

by dreadedlaramie



Category: 20th Century CE RPF
Genre: F/F, bonnie and clyde as ladies its a classic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 21:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4892086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreadedlaramie/pseuds/dreadedlaramie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Run until they shoot you. (They will shoot you.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is the road to ruin and we started at the end

**Author's Note:**

> loosely styled off daphne gottleib's "15 ways to stay alive"

  1. Look for wrinkled shirts fraying at the collar and sleeves, whiskey on the rocks, wedding ring tan-lines, tired eyes. Find men who can’t or won’t talk to their wives or bosses or both, be a balm and a comfort. Smile like you’re sweeter than you are, file away your edges until you’re soft and safe, listen like you care.
  2. Take their wallets, their rings, their watches, their cufflinks; take everything you can and climb out a bathroom window.
  3. There will be a girl, and she will smile at you across the bar like she knows. She’ll watch you size up your marks and her smile will be all teeth, more of a threat or a promise.
  4. Do not look at her. Do not want her. Know that you’ll fail.
  5. In a motel room, she pulls your hair hard and you feel her teeth on your lips and throat and heart. You skate your hands across the planes and crests and troughs of her, cling to her reverently, crescent-cuts like tiny prayers along her ribs. She will settle between your legs and press her fingers tongue mouth inside against along you as you sigh shout beg laugh.
  6. Don’t fuck a hurricane.
  7. She drives fast and reckless and giddy and only a few months ago you would have said  _be careful slow down pay attention_. But now you laugh and stick your bare feet out the window, feel the wind tangling your hair and her fingers locked with yours (you drink rum and life straight out of the bottle)
  8. You steal and lie and fuck your way through Tuscaloosa, through Jackson, through Memphis, through St. Louis. In Kansas City she has a stranger’s blood on her hands when she kisses you (so do you).
  9. When it’s late at night you can drive as fast as you want and it’s like no one can reach you. Like the whole world is just the two of you in this car as you speed by scrub-grass and telephone poles. You watch the numbers of the mile-markers flash past one after the other, blurring into each other like a green streak along the road, another dividing line.
  10. Do not want this. Repeat this as a reminder every time you try to scrub blood out of a shirt or stitch up a wound.
  11. Don’t lie to yourself. This is exactly what you want.
  12. Learn the different ways knives and words can cut, learn how to take apart a mind and a gun. Eyes will dilate from both fear and excitement; pupils blow wide just the same when you trail the barrel of a gun down her cheek as when you tell a room full of people that it’s only when they move that they’ll get hurt.
  13. You are a gun to the head, a knife to the throat, a boot to the ribs. Maybe you always were.
  14. This isn’t jumping off the cliff. Everyone will say you should have turned back should have stopped, and you could have. (You didn’t and you don’t.) When you think about this your hands and breath hold steady. You would have jumped off the cliff.
  15. Run until they shoot you. (They will shoot you.)
  16. She talks about houses on sandy beaches and long days lounging in the sun and never having to worry about anything again. You dream about the ocean, hunger clawing at your stomach, dirt and sweat stinging your eyes. There are lies people will chase across countries.
  17. Yards before a roadblock in Las Cruces she kisses you like she always has (the car swerves slightly but it matters even less now than before) and says, “You ready, darlin’?”
  18. This is when you jump off the cliff. Don’t hesitate. Don’t look down. Jump.
  19. A stomach wound hurts like hell and you’ll die slow. Her breath is rough and shallow and gasping. (It isn’t romantic. Hold her hand anyway.)



**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on [tumblr](http://optaisamme.tumblr.com/post/58303960926/this-is-the-road-to-ruin-and-we-started-at-the).


End file.
